Punta Culebra

We had the fortunate opportunity to meet Lydia Valencia, the education director at the Punta Culebra Marine Exhibition Center. This is a Smithsonian facility dedicated to education. The center is small and modest, but it provides over 25,000 children a year with a chance to experience marine life and tropical ecology.

Take a minute to check out their website. Culebra Island has an interesting history and lots of natural wonders we found worth exploring.
Be sure to take a look at the pics!

Amador Causeway

Amador Causeway

Long before the Causeway was a four mile long stretch of hotels, restaurants and bike paths, it was simply a series of islands – Naos, Culebra, Perico and Flamenco- off the coast of Panama. Not much is known about the islands before the Spanish arrived, but on the island of Naos, there is thought to be a pre-Colombian graveyard.

For many years after the Spanish arrived, the islands were a pirate’s paradise. Trade ships that were arriving to and leaving from the islands full of riches were the primary targets!

When the United States took over construction of the Panama Canal in the early 1900s, they used the rocks and earth removed from the Culebra and Guillard Cuts to connect the four islands. The causeway creates a breakwater that protects the ships waiting to enter the canal. It also helps prevent the buildup of sediment that could clog the entrance to the canal.

In 1913 all four islands were joined and became known as Fort Grant. This military zone was built to protect canal access during World War I, World War II and the Cold War. Many of the fortifications and underground bomb proof structures still exist. (We did not get to see any of them!)

In the 1970s, after the United States decided it would give the Panama Canal back to the Panamanians, a transition began. The United States started to move out and the Panamanians gradually moved in. During that time, however, access to the causeway was limited.

Finally, on December 31, 1999 the entire Canal Zone, including the Amador Causeway was returned to Panama. Since then, the causeway has begun anew. There is little, if any obvious evidence of the U.S. military base. There are new buildings and buildings under construction. Surely the Amador Causeway will continue to attract the locals and tourists alike!

A Day on BCI - the guided hike

"A Walk on BCI"

Zetek Trail, BCI

Zetek trail, BCI

Panama Rainforest Discovery Center

Panama Rainforest Discovery Center

Milwaukee reports on UWM at STRI study!

The professor with whom we are working was featured in the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel last week. We also have met Scott. He showed us around the greenhouse where he is doing some of his research. The photo shows Scott describing his current research to us in the STRI greenhouses at Gamboa.

UWM tree study

sheds light on forest diversity

Researchers draw parallels between communities and growth

By Sarah Perdue of the Journal Sentinel

Trees do not make good neighbors, at least to their own kind.

That so-called negative feedback, where young seedlings tend to die if an adult tree of the same species is nearby, is one way forests maintain diversity. Now, a group of researchers, including two scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, say they know how it happens.

Their results, published online Friday in the journal Nature, show that abundant tree species are less susceptible to disease inflicted by soil-borne organisms.

"People have approached this question and assumed that the major enemies are above ground, such as rodents or insects," said Scott Mangan, a post-doctoral researcher at UWM and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the lead author of the study. "Our paper suggests we have to consider what is below ground as well."

Working on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal, the researchers selected six tree species found in forests there for a greenhouse experiment. They planted seedlings of each species in pots containing soil collected near adult trees of those same species - each species was planted in the six different soil types. They then measured the effects the soil had on the growth of seedlings from the various species.

"We wanted to test how seedlings perform in the presence of their own soil communities as opposed to other species' soil communities," Mangan said. "The worse a species does when grown with their own soil, the stronger the negative feedback."

Previous studies have suggested that predators of a specific tree grow in numbers as that species becomes more abundant in a forest. If that were true, the researchers would expect that seedlings of more abundant species show more negative feedback.

Instead, they found the opposite was true: More abundant species were less harmed by the soil communities. In other words, the soil communities are the cause of the diversity, not an effect.

"The species that are hit hardest by these (soil) organisms are always going to be lowest in abundance," said Stefan Schnitzer, a UWM professor of biology and co-author of the study.

The protective environment of a greenhouse does not perfectly mimic a forest, however, so the researchers needed to determine if the soil near adult trees in a forest has the same effect on seedling growth. They grew seedlings much like they had done in the greenhouse, only now they planted seeds in soil near adult trees in an established forest at Gigante Peninsula in mainland Panama, where rodents and insects could get to the seedlings.

"If it were insects driving this pattern, we'd expect leaf damage to be higher in offspring of the same species," Mangan said. Instead, they saw no pattern of leaf damage between the species, which meant the negative feedback they were seeing in the forest was also due to organisms in the soil.

Implicating soil-borne organisms in plant disease is not a new idea. Farmers, for example, rotate what they grow in a particular field from season to season to prevent crop-specific soil pests.

This study shows for the first time that the soil organisms are targeting seedlings in tropical forests in a way that helps to maintain the diversity of the forests.

"One of the great mysteries of lowland tropical rainforests is their extraordinary richness in tree species," said Stephen Hubbell, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA who was not involved in the research. "This is a marvelous, well-designed study that makes a major contribution to our understanding of how tropical forests work."

Mangan said the next step will be to identify the soil organisms that specifically affect each species.

"If we can identify the mechanisms and important organisms that are needed to maintain a diverse forest, that goes a long way when we are trying to, say, reforest a cleared area," he said.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/97208709.html

Miraflores Locks

After our brief visit to the zoo, we headed via the SACA (public bus) to Miraflores Locks. Construction of the Miraflores locks was completed in 1913. They are at the entrance of the canal off of the Pacific Ocean. The locks link the Pacific with the Miraflores Lake, a manmade lake.

We treated ourselves to all of the tourism attractions: a 10 minute documentary in the theater (very brief in comparison to David McCallough’s 600 page history), the exhibition hall houses a history of the construction of the canal, an ecological exhibit that highlights the canal’s watershed and some of the plants and animals found there, and a full scale pilot training simulator and route maps. But the highlight was being there in time to watch two ships go through the locks! The sun came out just in time for us to find a spot on the rooftop observation deck and take in all of the action.

Here is some canal trivia you can impress your friends with:

1. The main work on the Canal was completed in 1914. Construction of 3 new locks is underway. The expansion project will be completed in 2014.

2. The cost of building the canal was $380 million dollars. ($310 million for actual construction; $20 million for sanitation; $40 million paid to the original French companies; and $10 million paid to Panama for rights)

3. Construction employed more than 43,400 persons (at the height of activity in 1913).

4. It is estimated that 25,000 people died building the canal. That’s about 500 per mile.

5. Over 152.9 million cubic meters of land and was removed. Some of it was used to build the Amador Causeway. (More on that in future posts.) I don’t know where the rest of it went yet!

6. A ship traveling from New York to San Francisco can save 7,872 miles using the Panama Canal instead of going around the tip of South America.

7. It takes 24 hours to pass through the canal.

8. Today it costs between $200,000 and $250,000 to transit the canal. The smallest charge was 45 cent to swimmer Albert H. Oshiver, who swam through the locks in December, 1962.

9. Approximately 12,000 oceangoing vessels now pass through the Canal yearly, almost 35 a day.

10. The record of 14,807 ship transits was set in 1968.

11. Each lock in the Canal system is 1,000' long, 110' wide, and 70' deep. The new locks will be larger to accommodate even bigger ships that are now being built.

Click below to reach the album for more photos...

Summit Zoo & Miraflores Locks